Those Five Called Atlas
by Human Customs Still Elude Me
Summary: In the twenty years since Starfire disappeared, the Titans fell apart at the seams. Cyborg became obsolete, Beast Boy a one-man zoo, Robin alone, and Raven in the depths of her own mind. Everything had all but fallen apart, but somehow...she came back, and the events leading up to it were all but forgotten. (How Long Is Forever fic about the twenty years before Starfire arrived)
1. Prologue

The Titans lasted six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-six minutes without her.

Robin was the first to go. They had only gotten back to the tower two hours, forty-one minutes previously. He had been brutally honest and to the point, which probably wasn't the best in this situation.

"She's probably a hundred years in the future. Unless we can figure out time travel, we can't get her back."

Beast Boy had argued almost immediately. Cyborg tried to calm them down to no avail, eventually siding with Beast Boy. Raven didn't even try to stop them. She hated to admit it, but Robin was right. Deep down, all of them knew that she wasn't coming back. By the time she was about to intervene, Robin was gone. Leaving the room radiating of anger and frustration, clearly being pushed to the breaking point.

Beast Boy left after two days, thirteen hours, and three minutes. He was clearly wishing that he could bear staying. Both Raven and Cyborg could see it as he left the Tower for the last time, saying that he could make it as a solo hero. Apparently, he lasted six months.

Six days, eighteen hours, and twenty-six minutes after Starfire had fallen through the portal, Raven left. She said she needed time to be alone, when in reality, she just needed to get her emotions under control in a calmer place than that horribly silent tower.

She never came back.

Cyborg had searched. He found all of them.

Robin was no longer Robin. He avoided the news, his friends...everyone. When Cyborg found him eight months after he had left, he was working alone as Nightwing. He seemed incredibly lonely, though he acted as though nothing was wrong. Cyborg had to admit, it was weirdly depressing to see their leader so damn alone, blending in with the darkness with ease. When he addressed these problems, he had been given a glare to make Batman proud. After that, he rarely saw nor heard of Nightwing.

Beast Boy was working in a zoo. To be more specific, in the ten months since he had left, he had become a one-man zoo. It crushed Cyborg to see his friend living in a cage, seeming so small and helpless. He was clearly incredibly ashamed to be a former hero being laughed at by small, bratty children, only to see them barely even scolded by their seemingly equally terrible parents.

He didn't find Raven. Raven found him. She told him everything. Practically begged for help, unaware that he would've helped her in a heartbeat. She said she went to him because he was most likely to listen. About her powers beginning to take her over, about Trigon, about how she had been so damn alone and had felt so damn helpless.

They defeated Trigon. But the cost was high.

Beast Boy completely gave up any notion of protecting Jump City-and the world in general-after that. They completely lost touch with Nightwing after that, after he disappeared as soon as the threat had passed. Raven...

Raven lost herself. Confined to her mind, fraught with loneliness and confusion, completely oblivious to the world around her, the cell that became her cage.

Cyborg would visit her. She was aware of this. She heard his voice, felt his gentle hand resting on her shoulder. His kind words, telling her about anything and everything. "Oh, the Justice League defeated Brainiac again a few days ago!" Or, "Hey, guess what? I think I saw Robin by the Tower last night. I dunno, it was pretty dark." After a while though, he stopped coming. Some subconscious thought told her that this was because he became obsolete, unable to keep up with the rapidly changing technology.

Beast Boy rarely visited, but when he did, he stayed until he was kicked out by some unknown person. He would talk about nothing in particular, saying those dumb jokes that she could barely hear through her own mind but she desperately wished to respond to. He would lay a hand on her shoulder, sometimes trying to wrap his arms around her before leaving. After a time, she began to think that all of this was fake. She started to shield herself from what her mind, those last traces of Trigon, told her was all just an illusion. He stopped coming too.

Even rarer, was when Robin came. He only started coming after she completely collapsed into a shell. He couldn't get close enough to touch her. He wasn't real...was he? All of this seemed more real than those shadows that plagued her mind. He would nver stay very long, just long enough to whisper an apology that would make what was left of the old Raven hear his crushed, heartbreaking tone.

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 **And that's what you call a prologue. Very short, and mostly a set-up. There's gonna be more on each Titan. Like, at least four more chapters. I'll have Raven's slow descent into insanity...being a prisoner of her own mind...uh..they weren't very clear on what happened, Beast Boy's time as a solo hero, Nightwing bailing the former's ass out of trouble and one instance I have in mind of the reverse, Cyborg slowly falling behind the current tech and probably a long-ass internal monolouge, and, of course, them banding together one last time for Starfire.  
**

 **Anyway, what'd you think? Love, like, meh, dislike, hate, KILL IT WITH FIRE BEFORE IT LAYS EGGGSSS? Really, I wanna know. Particularly if it's that last one.**


	2. Cyborg

**Cyborg's chapter. Not too sure how it turned out.**

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For the first ten years, Cyborg visited Raven as much as he could. The Titans had all but stopped talking after Trigon's defeat. Raven quickly became trapped within her own mind. For a while, though, he was able to have some pretty great conversations. Well, fairly one-sided and awkward, but he enjoyed them nonetheless. Pleasantries, whatever their friends were doing, whatever the Justice League had done to save the planet recently...not much. After he couldn't get within a foot or so of her, he just stood there awkwardly and talked.

She talked too. To herself, mostly. After a few years, though, he came to realize that she was convinced he wasn't real. He talked less. About things he knew she liked. Some of her books. Oddities through languages. Idly telling her some dumb jokes he dimly remembered Beast Boy telling that Raven showed even the barest hint of amusement at. A few months before he couldn't visit anymore, she gave a clear response. The first one in years, really. He had just been talking-telling a dumb joke, actually.

"Okay, okay, I got one. Why did the Aardvark cross the road?" He hadn't even expected a response. Nothing past the usual stony silence. Turns out he was dead wrong.

"To beat up the idiot telling jokes about it..."

He had practically fallen over from shock. He had kept talking, asking more questions, telling more dumb jokes. All he got was the same cold silence as before. Same unseeing stare at the opposite wall, the same jet-black shield appearing before he could lay a hand on her shoulder. After that, she never responded again. It was crushing to see her like this, to say the least.

Ten years, eleven months, twenty-eight days and fourteen hours after Raven left, Cyborg's last power cell burned out.

He tried to make a new one, to no avail. He tried to order one, only to find that that would be impossible as well. He got desperate, and ended up asking multiple Justice League members. Most of them told him to ask Batman. Two days after he asked the Dark Knight, the response was blunt, to the point, and almost disturbingly like Robin. Like father like son, he supposed. However he said it, though, the response was the same-I'm sorry, you're completely obsolete. Paraphrasing, of course. Barely.

Every once in a while, someone would trip whatever alarms were still working. It was a never-ending cycle of teenagers who didn't realize there was someone in there, low-level criminals how mostly stole bits of machinery, and-rarely, mind you-a dark figure that stayed within a pool of light before vanishing into the shadows again. Cyborg had a vague feeling as to who it was, but he never tried to talk to the person. He made sure to keep his distance.

Before long, he had to dedicate most of the tower's power to keeping him up and running. He stopped turning the lights on and making repairs. He could jump over the debris in the hallway-it wasn't like he could catch any diseases from outside-and he could just avoid the hole in the window of the ops room. He didn't want to go in there anyway-the discarded game controls and the broken necklace was a bit too much for him to handle.

The main risk of living off the tower's systems was storms. Power surges practically fried his systems twice. By the time he was back online, at least a week had passed, both times. It was pretty disturbing to be out for a week and wake up to your systems repaired and Titans Tower tidied up. Again, he had a very good idea as to who this was, but he never went looking for him. It was enough to know that there was _someone_ looking out for him.

For fifteen years, he had kept himself busy with what was in the tower. For the five years since he had been confined to the tower, he just started reading a lot. Once he had gone through everything in his room, the crime files, and the mainframe, he ended up turning to Raven's old books. It was weird, going into his friend's room for the first time in over fifteen years. It was impeccable-exactly the way she had left it. It took only two years to go through all of her books-the ones in languages he knew, anyway-and he ended up learning various new ones.

Nineteen years after Starfire had gone through that portal, Cyborg just started walking through the corridors. Past the ops room, the bathroom, the gym whose machinery had probably stopped working years ago. Hurriedly past Beast Boy's old room-the nineteen-year-old smell was enough to scare off the Man of Steel himself. Past Raven's room-the only door he was sure still worked-and finally past Robin's. Before he reached Starfire's, he stopped. He had been in the other's rooms to clean up. But no one had been in Star's room since she had left. Not him, not Raven, nobody.

In the end, he turned away. Went back to the garage. Kept making endless changes to the long-dormant T-Car. He wasn't even sure if it would move at this point. There wasn't enough space, anyway. All of his half-finished projects littered the floor, the shelves long since filled. And since he couldn't even move the stuff outside, there wasn't really much of a point in cleaning it up.

Another year passed. He was trying to fix the alarms, to no avail. Eventually he just leaned against the wall and fumbled idly with a wrench. That was, before he thought he heard a scream. He straightened up briefly, before shaking his head and telling himself he was going crazy, that the machine half of his brain was finally failing him.

And then, ten minutes later, he heard a much closer shriek and a noise that sounded like muted gunshots. Cyborg rushed to the source of the noise-the ops room- and stormed through the doorway.

"Yo! Who's here blastin' my..."

He froze. The pipe he had grabbed to wield like a staff clattered to the floor.

"...Star?"

Dark pink hair, bright purple clothes, green eyes...she looked exactly the same as when she left. "Starfire. I don't believe it. You...you haven't aged a day!" He crossed the dirty floor between them, reaching out to her, hand inches from her shoulder, as if he was afraid she would fly away.

She looked so lost, so scared, it was heartbreaking. "Cyborg, what had happened? Why are...you..." He smiled in response. "Old?" The grin faded as he walked over to the window he hadn't faced in so long. "Well that's what happens to folks when you go away for twenty years."

"Twenty years?" So shocked. So horrified. "That battle with Warp, that was a long time ago. You fell through a wormhole, and..." He gestured at the bleak skyline, his old friend silent behind him. "Welcome to the future."

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 **Like it? Hate it? Well, let the flames burn, let the positive reviews be read and thanked for! Which brings us to...**

 **Thanks to The Dark Azarathian(Guest Reviewer) for their positive input.**

 **The next chapter should be up in a week or less.**


	3. Beast Boy

Beast Boy...really did have a lot of hope for those first six months. The time between that and Trigon, he had actually been thwarting small bank robberies(which nearly got him killed once, turns out they actually were going to shoot), purse-snatchers, peeping toms and the like. Low-level criminals, although he did stop some punk from shooting a really very nice couple who took him out for dinner in gratitude. He had seen them around once or twice since then, and each time they had waved politely before going about their business.

Before that, though, he was already living alone. He missed the others. He could never quite bring himself to visit any of them-he wasn't sure he could've found Robin if he tried-and instead worked odd jobs and, when he saw it, helped fight crime. The first time someone had had to bail him out was three weeks in. It was three exceptionally brave cops who had gotten close enough to his fight with Dr. Light to shoot his power cell, which electrocuted both him and Beast Boy. As soon as they could, the cops had pulled Beast Boy out and got him to a hospital. He only spent a few days in there, thankfully.

The second time, it had been Robin. Sorry, Nightwing. Two months into being a solo hero, he had been caught up in a massive conspiracy to get some phsycopath into office. He never asked what office, but he assumed it was mayor. Anyway, he was being shot at, having grenades thrown at him, and-in retrospect this cracked him up-dogs were chasing him. Yeah, send dogs after the guy who can turn into literally any animal. How ingenious. But, all that aside, he was still bitten on the foot and was running as fast as he could as a cheetah. By the time he had gotten outside and was praying not to get shot, Nightwing had shown up. Kicked their collective asses, too. It was a little weird to see his former leader not in traffic light colors, but there you go. It actually suited him pretty well, all he needed was a death glare and he would've made anyone run for the hills.

Nightwing had patched Beast Boy up the best he could and told him to make sure that none of his injuries got infected. When the cops, firefighters, and paramedics showed up there was enough distraction that by the time he turned to thank his old friend, Nightwing was already gone.

Really. All he needed was the glare.

Things went smoothly for the next month and a half or so. His foot healed nicely, he had actually managed to pin Nightwing to a wall-almost literally-and thank him, and he never had to deal with more serious crimes. He saved a few lives, a few livelihoods, a few purses, and some poor girls' privacy. He kept himself out of trouble. Up until, of course, he was yet another victim of either happenstance or just plain terrible luck. That was, of course, when he was just walking home after buying some tofu, and having to pass through a crowded park. He circled wide around the area where he had played football with Cyborg and Robin, which, of course, proved to be just about the worst decision he had made that day. Because he couldn't just have a nice walk home through the park without being shot at.

The first shot was a warning. If you can call shooting an innocent dog a warning. When people started to panic, more shots rang out. Multiple snipers on nearby buildings. By the time the black energy shields went up, at least two dozen people were on the ground. And he was one of them.

Beast Boy had lunged forward to some nearby kids-looked like siblings, the oldest couldn't have been older than ten-and shoved them to the ground. In the process, he had taken two bullets-one to the left arm, one to the abdomen. He later learned that it had missed everything vital, but still...he thought he was gonna die. Nightwing had gotten there pretty fast-and made quick work of the shooters. This made a record for how many Titans had been in the same general area in the past three months.

Raven had showed up a few seconds after Nightwing. Apparently, they had been talking. Once the shooting stopped, she took a few minutes to get to him. She had to either heal people the best she could-or diagnose them as lost causes. In that time, the oldest kid-a girl who was actually very nice, apparently her name was Roslyn-had pulled off her jacket and was using it to try and stop the bleeding. He didn't remember much after that, just the kids' parents showing up, Raven appearing over him and looking somewhere between terrified and exhausted. Apparently he had mumbled some pretty embarrassing things on his would-be deathbed, but everyone who had been within earshot feigned short-term memory loss.

He was in the hospital for a month that time. He had received a card from Cyborg that-much to his pleasure-contained the status of all the Titans, which had actually been bothering him. From the other two, he got a very small and very clearly cheap(she hadn't removed the price sticker) get-well card from Raven that included a vaguely sarcastic note, and a similar one from Nightwing. He actually remembered to remove the price tag, though.

Once he was out, it had been almost five months since Starfire's departure. For the next two weeks, things went very well. Minimal crime, and he grew a solid half-inch. He also got a refund on the tofu that had been shot full of holes, which was nice.

Things started to go wrong again very, very fast. He started getting beaten more often. The criminals were getting tougher, more confident, lulled into the false sense of security that came from two, technically speaking three heroes in town. The cops ended up beaten a lot too. A lot of good men and women were lost, and Beast Boy couldn't help but blame himself. He started trying harder. He knew that Nightwing did too, but even still...up until he accidentally blew up a riverside building, death just wasn't very real to him, despite the loss of his parents.

He wasn't even losing that bad. Both he and Nightwing had gotten an anonymous tip, and he just got there earlier. But, of course, he just _had_ to go barging into an exchange between one small gang and one slightly larger one. Hostages and money, as far as he could tell. Turns out jumping from the rafters as a massive lion wasn't the best idea on the planet. In other words, they started shooting. By some miracle-that hadn't graced him a month previously, not that he was bitter or anything-he wasn't shot.

Beast Boy took out around a dozen of them before he noticed that Nightwing had taken out around the same number. It quickly became a wordless, temporary alliance. They weren't teammates anymore, but that didn't mean they didn't still care about each others' safety.

But, of course, his good luck didn't last for long.

Turns out they were in a warehouse used by a small criminal organization that took sold ammo and fuel to anyone in Jump City. He found this out went he slipped in cheetah form and one of his large claws pierced a gas tank. He only found out was happened because someone threw a small explosive at Nightwing. He dodged, but it lodged itself in the tank before going off. Let's just say that blowing up a warehouse full of ammo wasn't pretty.

By the time they figured out was was happening, they were already running for the window. Apparently, Beast Boy was much faster. He was already in bird form, waiting for Nightwing to jump out the window, by the time the entire thing collapsed in on itself. He could just barely make out a small, limp figure falling towards the water below. By the time he got low enough to make out the small form through the freezing, clear water, debris all but blocked his view.

This would be a nice time to mention that it was the middle of winter, snowing, and ice was forming on the inhospitable river.

He dove in the second he saw the blood spiraling to the surface.

The next month...was difficult. He came to the conclusion that he couldn't do this anymore, and basically became a cop without the badge. For the first week of that month, he also had to take care of his injured friend whom he was just hoping didn't get pneumonia.

It wasn't too difficult to find Nightwing's base. He had a tracker on him that somehow hadn't shorted out. It was a small apartment with a surprisingly large basement. As far as he could tell, it was rented out to Richard Grayson. So, when he had to take off the mask to clean the bad cut on Nightwing's face, he wasn't too surprised to find out his friend was, in fact, Dick Grayson.

If they were ever on good terms again, he would get a lot of mileage out of making fun of that name.

He treated the injuries. Thanks to his good sense to curl up into a ball when he jumped out the window, not much had hit Nightwing. Just a nasty cut on the face, a bad cold, and a pretty big gash on his chest. That last one was actually something to worry about, but luckily, it seemed he healed fast. Didn't mean it wouldn't leave a big, probably painful scar though.

The last time Beast Boy went back to his friend's home, the door and windows were locked and a box sat on the front step. When he opened it, there were the (cheap) blankets he had gotten upon the discovery that his friend only had two, the unused bandages he had left on the table, and some slightly crumpled-up money that, despite his best efforts, Nightwing hadn't able to smooth out. After trying all means of entry, Beast Boy decided getting in as a mouse would only freak him out, and left with the box. Once he got home, however, he found a note at the bottom that was clearly written with such a shaky hand that it was barely more than a hieroglyphic scrawl.

After a few minutes of squinting at it(seriously, why had he even tried to write in cursive?), the ex-superhero had no choice but to grin stupidly, in the way that used to infuriate Raven.

 _Thank's for saving my behind._

He tucked the note into his belt and went about his life.

After another six months or so, Raven and Cyborg showed up at his door. Raven looked on the verge of tears, and Cyborg didn't look much better. It was a big shock, to have his friend come, asking for help. He had refused at first, but after he heard what was about to happen...Well, he told them Nightwing's address and asked where they were parked. Turns out the T-Car had blown up in Cyborg's face a few weeks ago, so it was up to Raven to get them places.

After Trigon, he fell into a complete rut. Everyone did. Cyborg used up the last of his power, Nightwing vanished into the night-no pun intended-and Raven...her mind seemed to collapse in on itself. He would visit her, sometimes, after he started working in the zoo. She stopped responding, wouldn't even let him get close. He stopped going as often. Seven years crawled past, and things started to change all over the country.

The Justice League disbanded. Went their separate ways. The Dark Knight vanished, leaving Gotham to Police Commissioner Gordon and his men. Years passed. Beast Boy-no, he was an adult now-Garfield kept paying attention to the news. Another ten years crawled by, and instead of just occasionally, members of the mutant gang would seep in from Gotham Throw things at him. Say dumb things, like, "Nah, he don't shiv 'bout us Mutants," or just a plain, "You stink!" Followed by laughter, of course.

The Dark Knight returned. Took down the mutant gang, followed by a new Boy Wonder. Eventually, he had a heart attack while fighting Superman. He was revealed as Bruce Wayne. This didn't surprise him, of course. He still remembered saving Nightwing from simultaneously drowning and bleeding out.

Two more years passed. The last members of the Mutant Gang, hiding out in Jump City, left for the night. They hadn't thrown anything more harmful than snowballs, which was nice. Thanks to his distraction, Beast Boy didn't notice the quiet footsteps approaching until he moved out from behind a crate. He changed back into human form and stared for a split second before his voice found him again.

"No way..."

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 **Sorry about the wait. I write at night, and I just rediscovered PJO, so...yeah. Anyway, you can expect the next chapter sometime before the Earth Federation becomes a thing! Good luck guessing which one.  
**

 **Special thanks to Whitemiko12 and guest reviewer Runner for their positive reviews.**


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